I was asked to do a basic tutorial on how to get started in Cubase.  I won't tell you that the way I work in Cubase is the best way, it’s just the way I do it.  But, if you are new to electronic music production and you are starting out in Cubase, then hopefully some of the things I will show will be beneficial to you.

For writing a dance tune (you pick the subgenre, its basically going to be the same no matter what your preference is), you need three basic things: samples, VSTs (or software instruments/instruments), and automation.  Now, the core of it is obviously going to be the samples and sounds you use to write your tune. However, automation comes in handy when you want the musical experience to take you to new heights.  For the purposes of this tutorial we will not focus on automation or instruments much.  So lets begin: open cubase (I'm using SX3 for this, will upgrade soon).

 I'll start by creating a new project.  From the File menu I select "New Project," then select the empty template, and click OK.  I'm prompted to select or create a directory for my project.  This project folder is where all my audio files will be imported as I am working on my track, so I'm going to select an area on my drive that I've designate specifically for music creation. Doing this will help keep you organized, especially if your desktop looks like mine and that little extra help keep things a bit less complicated.

So I've created my project folder, I've clicked OK and now I see the main sequencer window native to Cubase.

Shortcuts
Before I proceed I'm going to go over the important shortcuts that will help streamline the Cubase working process.

F3 - Toggles the Mixer window
F2 - Toggles the Transport
Spacebar - Toggles playback
1 - On the number pad is useful for starting at the beginning of a selected loop region
Ctrl + Click (where the Bars are listed above the Sequencer Space) sets the left Loop point
Alt + Click sets the right Loop point
G - Zooms into the Sequencer Space
H - Zooms out
F - Toggles the Follow function during playback
Shift + Click - Allows the selection of more than one element at a time
Alt + Click Hold and dragging an element will allow an element to be copied on the fly, really useful.

Percussion 
I'll right click in the space to the left of the Sequencer window and select add audio track (also accomplished by selecting the Project menu ->Add Track ->Audio).  I'm making sure the track is selected or highlighted; then from the File menu, I select Import -> Audio File.

This is going to be the kick track so I will bring in a kick sample and using some of the wonderful shortcut key strokes I mentioned previously, I will create a loop for my kick track.  So I lay out 16 kicks or 4 bars of kicks or whatever you want to call it.  I will do the same process for the snare and the first loop of hats as well.  For the purpose of this tutorial I am using a closed high hat and a bit of a house snare.  I know that every producer has their own way of setting up their percussion, some use a VST drum sampler or whatnot. I enjoy putting everything together bit by bit so I manually plug all my percussion into the sequencer window.  On a side note, I'm doing this the slow way.  A quicker way to assemble your samples would be to press CTRL + P and that will open your the Media Pool for your Cubase project.  Importing your samples through the Pool window allows you to import without immediately importing straight to the sequencer window like I was first suggesting.  I use both methods depending on my mood.  Anyway, once you have samples in the pool you can just click and drag them to your sequencer window and they will immediately appear in whatever track you dropped them into.  If you drop the sample into the section below your existing tracks, a new audio track will be created for that sample.  Also keep in mind that any little audio edits or cuts you do to samples in the sequencer will show up for future use in the Audio Pool window as well.

*Side Note:  I always put compression on my master channel.  Something in the medium compression range is good to start with.  Once you know your compression it will get easier to decide how you want to use compression on your master channel.  It's good to put the compression on your master channel early on so that you can mix all your elements according to how it sounds with the compression on the master channel.  If you put compression on the master channel after you've written the track, some sounds will be a bit too loud and some that you wanted to give more attention to will disappear or hide on you.  So its good to mix and write with compression already applied.

Ok, so now that my three levels of percussion are assembled into nice loops, I'm going to make them sound like I want them to sound before I add instruments or anything else.  My basic goal for this part is to make the percussion sound so good that I could make a whole tune with just those three tracks.  I know that's not completely realistic in the long term because, well, the track wouldn't sell really, but if the percussion at least sounds great, your track has a better chance of being noticed and played. 

So, for my kick channel, the sample I used is a great sample already and doesn't need to be touched much, what I will do to it is use light compression on it, just so that when things get hairy when all the extra elements are added later, it'll still sound punchy and carry itself.  I will do the same for the snare channel, but I'm going to add some light, short reverb for my snare.  I just like the way that sounds.  For your purposes you can have a dry snare, I don't care, but let me tell you this, if you have great, and I mean really great samples, then half of the work is done for you.

On to the high hat.  One thing I do regularly on my higher percussive elements like high hats is to cut the bass out of the high hats in the channel's EQ.  I do this because it helps leave that space more room to breathe in the overall mix once you start adding bass lines etc.  I don't always compress my high hats, sometimes I do. I couldn't really tell you my reasoning behind it.  Do what works for you.  EQ is important, but so are the track levels.  If I compress my high hats, I often lower the track volume down to about 20% or so.  Play with it.

Instruments
Alright! On to the instruments.  Now that the percussion is perfect, I'm going to add an awesome bass line.  I'll click on the Project selection in the global Cubase menu, its right beside the Edit menu and the File menu (Project -> Add Track -> MIDI).  I'll see a MIDI Track added to the sequencer window. 

Now what I need to do is link that MIDI Track with the instrument I want to use.  I press F11 and the dialog for selecting VST Instruments pops up.

Clicking in the area where it indicates "no instrument," will open a drop down menu where I can see all VSTs that Cubase currently has access to.  My personal favorite is the one called Monologue that comes built in with Cubase.  It’s a simple VST and very easy to use and figure out.

To link Monologue with the MIDI Track I created I have to make sure that the MIDI track Out, goes through the VST.  On the very left side of the Cubase sequencer window I see an In and Out section when I have the MIDI Track selected or highlighted.  The Out probably has something crazy in it like MPU-401 or something. Basically, I'll click in that space and the Monologue VST will be in the drop down menu. 

I select Monologue and now any note that gets played in the MIDI track will play back whatever sounds I decide to set the VST to.

On to the writing.  One handy feature of using the loop regions is that if I am wanting to write a melody for that looped region, the fastest way to do that is by double clicking with my mouse in that looped region on the MIDI track.  Doing that will automatically create a small "window" or loop for me to work in.  Double clicking again in that little loop or window created will open a Piano Roll window that will allow me to write a melody for that loop. 

One thing you will notice when you open a VST and create a MIDI track, is that TWO tracks appear in your Mixer window that appear to be connected to the same sound when you are playing back the tune.  For current purposes, you only need to be concerned with the track in the Mixer that is directly a result of creating the VST.  So in this case, chances are the track that is important is the one titled "Monologue 1."   To help ease confusion, what I like to do is make the MIDI track channels disappear from the Mixer so that I don't have to worry about confusing things.  This is accomplished by clicking on the MIDI symbol on the far left, close to the bottom of the Mixer window.  The MIDI symbol is the round one with the 5 little dots creating a half moon shape across the top of the circle.

Clicking on that symbol will hide the channels you don't need to concern yourself with and now you can have a smooth and stress free working environment.  Another small thing that helps is to click on the image button that is highlighted in the top left of the Mixer Image I included.  That enables you to select your various effects like compression etc in the proper channels.

Automation
Figure it out yourself for goodness sake! Do I have to show you everything?  This stuff took me a year to nail down and I've given away half my "not so amazing secrets to a successful writing session" tips. :-)  What I will do is show you how I used automation with the sample project I built along with my tutorial.  Or should I say I'll take a screen capture of it so you can see what I did to accomplish the final sound of the bass line, "visually." 

Listen to the sample track here.